


In Sickness and In Health

by vegashoods



Category: Glee
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury, blood mention, injury mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 23:10:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11977038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegashoods/pseuds/vegashoods
Summary: It's been a year since the accident that nearly took Blaine's life, and Kurt isn't quite sure how to handle it until he realizes that the only thing in the way of his happiness is himself.





	In Sickness and In Health

**Author's Note:**

> i know, terrible title and summary, but i'm experimenting with first person point-of-view (which i NEVER write) so tell me in the comments what you think!

“The carnival’s in town again.”

 If I expect my words to have some grand effect on my audience, I’m disappointed; Crystal nods and scribbles some notes down, but she doesn’t seem to be moved by my statement. “How does that make you feel?” she asks me, her voice as calm and impassive as always.

 “How do you think it makes me feel?” I don’t mean to snap at her. It’s her job to ask me that question, but I hate it anyway. To me, my feelings are obvious⸺I have a drawer stuffed full of orange pill bottles at home and I go to therapy every Wednesday. I’m not all right, and I haven’t been for a full year.

 Luckily, Crystal is used to my reluctance to talk. Sometimes it feels like she’s dragging the truth out of me with hooks, and it’s painful to tell her what’s going on inside my head, but I always feel better once I’m done. She’s good at making the truth hurt less, if only for a few minutes.

 “Are you angry?” she asks. The question catches me off guard, though I should have been expecting it. Crystal has never asked the questions I rehearsed the answers to.  

“Why would I be angry?” 

 Crystal crosses her legs and sets down her clipboard, leaning forward to look me in the eye. “Think about it,” she says. “If the carnival is back in town, then that means the accident happened a year ago. I know it’s been hard for you. I’m sure you’re feeling a lot of things right now, Kurt, so I’m going to help you sort through all those jumbled up emotions. Okay?”

I manage a nod but drop my eyes. Eye contact with anyone makes me uncomfortable, but with Crystal it’s unsettling. It feels like she can stare straight into my soul and learn all my secrets just from one glance. 

 “Are you angry at your parents for leaving you alone?”

I shake my head. This, at least, is one thing I’m sure of. “I can’t expect them to drop their lives to take care of me⸺of us. They still call, and visit all the time, and they’ll come if I ever need anything. I’m not alone.”

“Okay,” Crystal says. “That’s good. Are you angry at your friends? I know a lot of them stopped visiting after a while.”

I consider it for a minute, but all I feel when I think about Santana or Rachel or Elliott is sadness. “I can’t hold it against them,” I say. “Everyone copes differently. It’s . . . hard. Even for me. I can’t expect them to put on a brave face forever.”

Crystal leans forward like she does when she thinks she’s close to uncovering something, her eyes glinting under the fluorescent lights. “How about you?” she asks. “Are you angry with yourself?”

“Yes.” The word comes out of my mouth before I can think it through, and it takes me by surprise. I’d never considered anger before. I’d been guilty, and sad, and miserable, but I had never thought I’d be mad at myself.

Crystal doesn’t beat around the bush, and her question is asked clearly and without hesitation. “Why?”

I swallow and take a moment to sort my thoughts. Now that I’ve made the realization, the explanation seems obvious, the words on the tip of my tongue, but my sentences are disorganized and messy in my head. “It was my fault,” I say. “I knew it was dangerous. I should have stopped him from going, but I didn’t. I was scared, and I knew something bad was going to happen, but I didn’t stop him. And I⸺I keep asking myself why, and wondering what my life would be like if I would have said no, and⸺” I cut off and shake my head. “What-if” is dangerous territory, and I’m tired of exploring it. I’ve said enough. 

 Crystal sighs, and her gaze is sympathetic but not pitying. “Kurt,” she says. “There’s nothing you could have done to prevent this. I don’t know if everything happens for a reason, but I do believe that sometimes, things just happen. They’re beyond our control. I know you wish you could turn back time and stop this horrible thing from happening to you, but⸺” 

“It didn’t happen to me,” I say, horror and resentment curdling in my chest. I never mean to make it about me, and yet somehow everyone feels pity for me while forgetting about the person who deserves their wishes and prayers. 

“Everyone acts like this is some huge tragedy that’s ruining  _my_  life, but it isn’t. The truth is that I’m being selfish right now, sitting in this room and complaining to you about this, because I came out of it completely fine. Blaine is sitting at home, alone, while I’m here trying to figure out what I’m feeling. It’s bullshit. So yeah, I should be angry at myself, because I’m horrible and cruel to the one person I love more than anything in this world. I should be talking to him right now, not sitting here whining about the accident that almost took my fiancé’s life.”

“Do you think Blaine is mad at you?”

The room is starting to spin around me, the paintings on the walls blending together into a monotone blur. My chest is tightening, and it’s getting hard to breathe, and I know that if I don’t calm down soon I’m going to have a panic attack. The thought of Blaine being upset with me, or hurt by me, more than he already has been, is enough to send me into a terrified madness. I stand on shaky legs and reach for my coat, though we’re not even halfway through the session. The only thought in my mind is to get home before it’s too late. 

I hear Crystal saying something⸺”Kurt, sit down, we need to talk about this”⸺but her voice is distant and distorted, like I’m hearing her with my head underwater. I mutter a goodbye and stumble my way to the door, fumbling with the buttons on my coat as I rush outside. The winter air, combined with the smell of the town, is enough to jolt me out of the paralyzing, crushing anxiety that had been trapping me. My need to get home to Blaine is still desperate, but now my head is clear enough for me to think. 

On the way home, clutching the steering wheel so hard my fingers are white, Crystal’s words repeat over and over in my head.  _Stop this horrible thing from happening to you._  It’s a funny statement. From the perspective of someone at the carnival that day, nothing happened to me. I was just the guy that was standing outside the ride, waving at the handsome man with the hazel eyes who was strapped inside. I was the guy who laughed as they went up, up, up, thrilled even though I wasn’t doing it. I was the guy who watched as it shook, and came loose, and fell to pieces going too fast for me to understand what was happening. I was the guy who watched as people got out, one by one, with nothing but scrapes and bruises, and I was the guy who screamed as the ambulance took away the handsome man, eyes closed and covered in blood.

Two people died, and one girl was in the hospital even longer than Blaine was, but I couldn’t imagine anything worse than what the doctors told me. They called it a traumatic brain injury and prepared a speech for me, full of medical terms that I didn’t know and explanations that stabbed knives into my heart with each passing second. He was awake, but not the same, and they told me that he would never be the same again. 

Nothing prepared me for the first time I saw him, lying still and pale in the hospital bed, his eyes blank where they used to be so full of life and joy. He didn’t say anything, not even my name, though he tried to form words a couple times. He seemed upset when he couldn’t say what he wanted to, but the doctors had warned me that he might never speak again, at least not normally. He could barely move, even after extensive therapy in the hospital, and he lost all the coordination he needed to play piano or guitar. I didn’t know if he even remembered how to play. I sat in that hospital room, and I talked to him, and I didn’t know if he understood me or if he was even listening. I held his hand, though he didn’t hold mine back, and I cried until I felt like I was never going to stop, and he didn’t comfort me. He didn’t know how.

It’s better, now. He can speak in fragmented sentences, using simple words, and his writing is almost legible. He’s relying on his wheelchair less, and sometimes he can even walk from room to room without help, though I’m always scared to let him try. He said the word “fiancé” the other day, clearly enough for me to understand it, and he smiled for the first time when I told him I got a job as a music teacher at the elementary school. I know he can understand me, which is all I need, so I run into the house without even taking my boots off and rush into the bedroom as soon as I get home. 

He looks the same as he did before the accident, if I don’t look too closely. His hair is styled flawlessly (something he insists on me doing every day, even if he doesn’t go anywhere), his hands folded in his lap, his head tilted to one side as he watches something on TV. It’s only subtle things that are different; he’s wearing a plain black shirt and sweatpants, a color he hated a year ago, and his stare is blank, not intrigued. He is almost eerily still, his blinking the only way I can tell he’s still alive.

And, of course, there’s the chair.

I ignore it, as I always do, and move to the bed to sit facing him so I can take his hands. He looks at me and his eyes flicker with something, some emotion that I can’t quite place, that’s there for a second and then disappears. He takes a breath to say something, but I shake my head and put a finger to my lips. “Don’t say anything,” I tell him. “I just⸺I need to talk to you.”

He doesn’t respond, but he almost never does, so I take a deep breath and mentally count to three to prepare myself. “I’m sorry,” I start. “Jesus, Blaine, I’m so sorry. This past year, I⸺I’ve been unfair to you. When the doctors said you could come home, I was so happy, but I had no idea how hard this would be. You and me, we⸺we used to be so much different. We would stay up for hours talking, and laughing, and we would sing together and wake up next to each other every morning. You’d make me breakfast in bed, and we’d cry over sappy musicals, and it was . . . it was something close to perfect. How was I supposed to know that it could all be over in thirty seconds? I’ve been blaming the . . . what happened to you on myself this whole time. I didn’t go with you because I had a bad feeling about it, and I should have tried harder to get you to stay safe, with me, but I didn’t. And if I had just told you to stay with me, then maybe . . .” I shake my head and blow out a shaky breath. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’ve only been thinking about myself, and the truth is that for a while, I resented you.”

I feel Blaine tense beneath my hands, and he looks away, but I turn my head to catch his eyes again, determined to see this through to the end. “I resented you,” I say again, “for taking our life together away from me. I resented you for going on that stupid ride, for making one decision that made it so damn hard to figure out what to do next. I didn’t get to hear your laugh, or sit here and listen to your voice, or see your smile or your crazy, amazing dance moves. I felt like I was your caretaker instead of your fiancé. But I realized that . . .” I blink away tears that I hadn’t realized were building and swallow past the growing lump in my throat. “I realized that whatever I lost, you lost it, too. And I might not have been able to see your smile anymore, but you couldn’t smile at all. And I couldn’t hear your voice, but I can’t even imagine⸺what it was like to not have a voice to speak with . . . I’m so sorry. I feel so horrible for resenting you for that, for something that wasn’t your fault. It makes me sick to think that you might hate me, or be angry with me, because I’ve been a terrible fiancé and a terrible friend for this past year. I love you more than anything, Blaine, and I . . . I can’t imagine a life without you. I can’t imagine a life where you hate me. So please, just . . . don’t hate me. I know it’s selfish to ask, but I can’t lose you.”

Blaine tightens his hands around mine, though it’s not the same as it used to be, and offers me a sad, genuine smile, the kind that I remember from before the accident. “Kurt,” he says, and takes a moment to catch his breath. It’s still hard for him to make his thoughts into coherent sentences, though he’s getting better every day. “I . . . don’t.”

I swallow and try to find some clue, some meaning, in his eyes, but I come up blank. He’s going to have to explain himself to me the hard way. “You don’t hate me?” I ask, heart pounding, half-afraid of his answer.

Slowly, surely, he shakes his head. “I love you,” he says, and I burst into tears before I can stop myself, my shoulders shaking with the force of my sobs. I had wondered, after the accident, if he still felt the same way about me as he had before. The doctors had told me that he still felt emotions, and he still had all his memories, but I had never known for sure. Not until now.

It’s the first time in a year he’s said he loves me.

I bury my face in his shoulder, grabbing at the material of his shirt like it’s a liferaft in the middle of the ocean, and even though I can feel how much effort it takes for him to do it, he reaches up to put his arms around me. We sit like that, holding each other, until I can’t cry anymore and everything else I’d wanted to say is lost, locked away for another day. “I’m going to be better from now on,” I promise him, sniffling and dabbing at his shirt where my tears soaked through it. “I’ll be better to you. We’ll go visit our families, and I’ll call our friends, and we’ll spend so much time together that you’ll get sick of me. I love you so much that I think it might kill me, and even on your worst days⸺on my worst days⸺I don’t want to spend my life with anybody else. Ever. It’s just you and me, Blaine, okay? What do you think?”

He leans forward enough to brush our lips together, just enough contact to leave me wanting more, and then he rests his forehead against mine, a familiar gesture that reminds me of everything I’ve ever loved about him. He smiles, even though he already looks exhausted, and it’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and I make a silent promise to never take it for granted again.

“Marry me,” he whispers. “In sickness . . . and in health.”

 _I love you, I love you, I love you,_ and all I can think is how much I want to grow old and live happily⸺not perfectly, but happily⸺with this man in front of me. “Till death do us part,” I say.


End file.
